Voltaire triumphed. “Ferney was the European court,” says Chateaubriand again in his Analyse raisonnée de l’Histoire de France; “this universal homage rendered to the genius who was sapping by redoubled blows the foundations of society as it then existed, is characteristic of the approaching transformation of that society. And nevertheless it is true that if Louis XV. had caressed ever so slightly the flatterer of Madame de Pompadour, if he had treated him as Louis XIV. treated Racine, Voltaire would have abdicated the sceptre, he would have bartered his power against a distinction of the ante-chamber, just as Cromwell was momentarily ready to exchange the place he now holds in history for the garter of Alix of Salisbury; these are mysteries of human vanity.”
Madame de Pompadour had sought the eulogies of Voltaire; she obtained them. From the moment when she persecuted the Jesuits she had a right to his approbation. When she dies, the patriarch of Ferney will be almost affected. He will write to Damilaville: “Consider, dear brother, that true men of letters, true philosophers, should regret Madame de Pompadour. She thought as she ought to; no one knows that better than I. Truly, we have sustained a great loss.” And to Cardinal de Bernis: “I think, Monseigneur, that Madame de Pompadour was sincerely your friend, and if it be permitted me to go further, I think from the depths of my rustic retreat that the King experiences a great privation. He was loved for himself by a soul born sincere, who had justness in the mind and justice in the heart.” Voltaire is always the same. What he lacks is not simply religious faith, but the moral sense.
While the foundations of the monarchy were cracking on every side, the patriarch of Ferney, that ancient courtier of noble lords and sovereigns, was trembling with joy and pride. “All that I see,” he wrote to M. de Chauvelin, April 2, 1762, “is sowing the seeds of a revolution which will infallibly arrive, but which I shall not have the pleasure of witnessing. The light is spreading so from place to place, that it will burst out on the first occasion, and then there will be a fine row. The young men are very lucky; they will see many things!” Madman, who regretted not being destined to see the scaffolds of ’93!
Madame de Pompadour also felt that the political, social, and religious edifice would crumble within a few years. But why concern one’s self about the future? Why be saddened by dismal thoughts and gloomy presentiments? What the haughty favorite desired was the ability to retain to her last day, her last hour, her sceptre as queen of the left hand. The rest troubled her little. It was not Louis XV., it was she who said: “After me the deluge!”
XII
THE DEATH OF THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR
It is a law of Providence that no one can shine without suffering, and that jealous Fortune avenges herself for all the successes that she grants. Women are like conquerors: they always expiate their triumphs. For these queens à la mode, these dazzling magicians who appear like meteors and who live amid a cloud of incense, there is after all no alternative but death or dethronement. To die or to grow old, that is the terrible dilemma from which they are unable to extricate themselves. Women whose attractions have not been more than ordinary bend to this common law with sufficient resignation. But the celebrated beauty, the haughty beauty who delights in herself as if her youth were never to end, secretly revolts against cruel destiny and silently endures a real martyrdom. Her shrivelled hand tries to retain the sceptre that is slipping from it. She is unwilling to descend from the throne whence she has been used to survey a crowd of servile adorers. As the changes come on gradually, in a manner hardly perceptible, she has probably failed to notice the precursory symptoms of her decline. She is told on all sides that she is more seductive, more radiant, than ever. Then, in this last blossoming of her departing youth, she experiences that indefinable sentiment, that blending of unquiet joy and voluptuous melancholy, which takes possession of the soul under the light of the last bright days of autumn. When one looks at the azure sky, one cannot realize that winter is so near. But if one drops one’s eyes, the yellowing leaves that cover the ground or are swept away by the wind, remind one that the feast of nature is drawing to a close. The woman who longs most to preserve her illusions concerning the perpetuity of her youth, finds warning accusations which afflict and terrify her. The first wrinkles, the first gray hairs; the color which needs to be touched up, the lips and eyes which call imperiously for paint; the insolent mirror which nevertheless one cannot break because it is in opposition to the flatterers, because in its mute language it brutally declares the truth!
Madame de Pompadour was forty-two years old. Aged prematurely by the unwholesome emotions of intrigue, vanity, and ambition, she was suffering both in body and in mind. Incessant palpitation of the heart disturbed her. Fever was her constant guest. On nearing the end of her career she looked back sadly over the road she had traversed, and comprehended at last the inanity of the things in which she had vainly sought for happiness. But for a true repentance she lacked a religious faith like that of Mademoiselle de La Vallière. In default of faith, the Marquise had great courage. She strove energetically against disease, but she remained worldly and theatrical even in suffering and death. “She would no longer appear in Paris,” says M. Arsène Houssaye; “at court she never showed herself except by lamplight, in the apparel of a queen of Golconda, crowned with diamonds, wearing twenty bracelets, and dragging after her an Indian robe embroidered with gold and silver. It was always the divine Marquise of other days; but presently, when one looked closely, one discovered that it was but a pastel, still charming, but rubbed out here and there. It was at the mouth that her beauty began to fade. She had early contracted the habit of biting her lips, to conceal her emotions. By the time she was thirty, her mouth had lost all its vivid freshness. It was necessary to repaint it after every meal and every kiss!”[53] Her eyes had retained all their brilliancy. But the rest of her person was plainly aging. She tried in vain to conceal her excessive meagreness under the skilful devices of the toilette. She was a woman stricken by death. She fell ill at Choisy, and while there was still time she asked to be taken back to Versailles in order to die as she had lived, amidst the evidences of her power. Her friends had an instant of hope, for a slight amelioration was produced. The poet Favart instantly produced this stanza:—
“Le soleil est malade,
Et Pompadour aussi;
Ce n’est qu’une passade,